KIGALI, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Rwabda has launched a nationwide vaccination campaign against polio following an outbreak of the disease in neighboring countries, health authorities said Monday.
Community health workers will deliver the oral polio vaccine recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to households. "The five-day vaccination campaign targets 2.7 million children under 7 years," Hassan Sibomana, head of the vaccination unit at the Rwanda Biomedical Center told reporters.
Noting that no polio case has been reported in Rwanda, Sibomana said the vaccination aims to reach all children in the age bracket regardless of their previous immunization status.
The last polio case in Rwanda was reported three decades ago.
Health authorities in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have detected cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus, according to the WHO. Africa was declared free of indigenous wild polio in August 2020 after eliminating all forms of wild polio from the region.
Polio, which invades the nervous system, is a highly infectious disease that can result in permanent paralysis. It particularly attacks children under 5 years. The virus is transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the faecal-oral route. ■